Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@××××××××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Cc: Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] SSD performance tweaking
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2012 14:24:03
Message-Id: 1423183.AyWZLp8OMG@energy
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] SSD performance tweaking by Alex Schuster
1 Am Sonntag, 26. August 2012, 14:49:08 schrieb Alex Schuster:
2 > Volker Armin Hemmann writes:
3 > > Am Sonntag, 26. August 2012, 13:41:09 schrieb Alex Schuster:
4 > >> Frank Steinmetzger writes:
5 > >>> Unless the filesystem knows this and starts bigger files at those 512 k
6 > >>> boundaries (so really only one erase cycle is needed for files <=512 k),
7 > >>> isn't this fairly superfluous?
8 > >>
9 > >> Yes, I think it is. When you search for SSD alignment, you read about
10 > >> this alignment all the time, even on the German Wikipedia, and many
11 > >> resources say that this can have a big impact on performance. But I
12 > >> could not find a real explanation at all.
13 > >>
14 > >> Besides that, it's not so easy to do the alignment, at least when using
15 > >> LVM. I read that LVM adds 192K header information, so even if you align
16 > >> the partition start to an erasable block size of 512K, the actual
17 > >> content is not aligned. See [*] for information how to overcome this.
18 > >> That is, if you believe the alignment to erasable blocks is important,
19 > >> personally I do not know what to think now. It wouldn't hurt, so why not
20 > >> apply it, but it seems like snake oil to me now.
21 > >>
22 > >> Wonko
23 > >>
24 > >> http://tytso.livejournal.com/2009/02/20/
25 > >
26 > > because erasing is slow. You can not overwrite data on a ssd. you have to
27 > > erase first, then reprogramm. Also, erasing shortens lifetime.
28 >
29 > Yes, I know that. But why exactly does it help to align a partition to
30 > the erasable block size? I don't get it. Why isn't it sufficient to
31 > align to the usual 4K block size, so that a block never spans over two
32 > erasable blocks?
33
34 well, for one, there are lots of ssd which have 8k pages. Not 4k.
35
36
37 --
38 #163933

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] SSD performance tweaking Alex Schuster <wonko@×××××××××.org>